ToT HC Resto shaman needing help. :(

Hello fellow shamans,
I've been reading the forums alot and studying around about my class. Yet I still have things that concern me.
Hope you guys can help.

Here is my Armory to start off with: eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/ragnaros/Ungravity/advanced
(Sadly with my new computer my WoL content went poof so I cannot share that. And yes....I have a dps hc ring...havent found better yet.)

1st question: Is mastery really the way to go for HC progression?
I've talked to other resto shamans on my server and almost all of them have gone from the 7,6k haste cap to roughly 70~80% mastery through reforging and gemming. With the reasoning that during fights such as Iron Q HC that we will shine when the Raid Group starts to drop under 50~% HP.
I've tried to reforge off my 30% haste cap down to the 25% and reforge the rest into Mastery and personally find no change once-so-ever.

I can't break the 110k max HPS on any fight no matter what I try to do. The Mist Monk always destroys me on the healing meters. Easily pulling 130k~ HPS.

2nd question: Am I just doing it wrong? Or is it my gear?
I use all my CDs when needed, and I am sure to have riptides, ES etc etc always up for incoming DMG. Even just use HW when there is nothing to heal just to get the most out of our HP bonus and maybe be lucky to snipe a heal off.
I'm starting to fear for my raid spot once again seeing the Monk just cleans the floor with me every time.
If anyone wants to see some WOL, I will add it tomorrow night after the Raid so people can see some numbers.

1. I didn't go mastery at any point in ToT. It just sucks. And I'm not even running with a disc priest most of the time (the 1% of times when our holy pala isn't there and our shadow goes disc don't count - and I'm keeping up quite well with our paladin. The druid bashes me usually on movement-heavy encounters when the raid is spread too to make shaman-armageddon complete). I saw a lot of improvement in my performance when I went from 3764 to 7613 haste as soon as my gear allowed me to reach it comfortably without having do crazy things. After the desired haste breakpoint, it was crit all the way. High haste builds like having a bit more spirit too. Due to high ilvls I attempted an int-gemming approach too. Went back to spirit after one raid night. The bigger heals just produce more overheals whereas being able to cast faster due to haste and more due to spirit is more comfortable for me.

For you, mastery is even worse than for me. You have a disc priest. Your mastery will shine even less than mine. And your disc will make sure that you're twiddling your thumbs for the most part and just become visible on the meters when you use a big CD for some big bang of incoming damage.

2. For as long as you make sure to use your UE before you cast HR, you're doing it right. Your gear is fine. I'm not quite happy with your gem choices, but that's a matter of taste, I suppose. The only thing I don't understand why you gem int/crit when your intent was to go for max mastery (which we already established isn't an all that clever approach, even though there are a lot of shamans who progress far with a high mastery build. In any case, other approaches seem more rewarding.) So, your gem choice says "I don't need any more spirit hybrid gems, so I take int hybrids, and I get crit because... I don't know why I'm taking crit in the gems because I'm actually going for max mastery."

I want your Loa-Ridden Bracers on heroic (put an int-enchant on there NOW)! Council just spit out that stupid mastery version for me... I want the haste (or crit, I'd take that too!) thing, damnit *mopes*

So... I'd personally recommend a crit-setup rather than a mastery-setup. Reforge all that silly mastery away as much as you can. And your yellow sockets should be filled with spirit/haste or spirit/crit, blue can stay spirit or int/spirit if you think you have enough or too much spirit already or even spirit/haste if you still need some more haste, and your red sockets can go int/crit or int/spirit, depending on your desired spirit and haste levels.

TLDR: Mastery should be reforged out of whenever possible because it's just not very rewarding to stack it, not even during progression.

Oh and... if you're losing your raid spot because you're being outhealed by a MONK and DISC priest, your raidleader needs to inform himself about the healing classes better. A shaman can't "win" against co-healers such as those, unless his skill outweighs that of priest/monk by oodles.

2. For as long as you make sure to use your UE before you cast HR, you're doing it right. Your gear is fine. I'm not quite happy with your gem choices, but that's a matter of taste, I suppose. The only thing I don't understand why you gem int/crit when your intent was to go for max mastery (which we already established isn't an all that clever approach, even though there are a lot of shamans who progress far with a high mastery build. In any case, other approaches seem more rewarding.) So, your gem choice says "I don't need any more spirit hybrid gems, so I take int hybrids, and I get crit because... I don't know why I'm taking crit in the gems because I'm actually going for max mastery."

I want your Loa-Ridden Bracers on heroic (put an int-enchant on there NOW)! Council just spit out that stupid mastery version for me... I want the haste (or crit, I'd take that too!) thing, damnit *mopes*

So... I'd personally recommend a crit-setup rather than a mastery-setup. Reforge all that silly mastery away as much as you can. And your yellow sockets should be filled with spirit/haste or spirit/crit, blue can stay spirit or int/spirit if you think you have enough or too much spirit already or even spirit/haste if you still need some more haste, and your red sockets can go int/crit or int/spirit, depending on your desired spirit and haste levels.

TLDR: Mastery should be reforged out of whenever possible because it's just not very rewarding to stack it, not even during progression.

The reason my gemming is still with crit, is because I'm a really poor player :x most of my gold goes to Flasks/Pots/Cooking mats for the guild so I didnt want to spend 2k gold on re-gemming for a "Test" build. And I do reach the 7,6k very easily through reforging off mastery with my current gear so I gemmed crit after.
Though I will reconsider my gemming and sockets like you said.
I, very well, understand where you are coming from with the mastery-disc priest example, because our kill on Horridon HC was exactly the way you just described.

I will most likely be returning to Haste/Crit build for tomorrows raid.

Thank you alot for your input! And all the best of luck on getting those Bracers!!

If gold is an issue, then leave those int/crit gems. They're fine. Not my cup of tea, but they're not "wrong", and they'll definitely better fit your new improved crit build than they do your current build

Avoid mastery, especially if you're healing with a disc priest. I found a crit build to be optimal two healing with a disc priest, I aimed for a bit above 3764 haste, 11k spirit and the rest crit and it worked great. I've recently switched to 7613 and am indifferent towards it, I think it's a bit overrated for 10 mans, though I haven't reached Ra'den yet. I tried an int heavy build as well and would not recommend it over crit. Two healing helps a lot, you're not gonna break 110k hps on most fights when you're using more healers than necessary. HC Horridon is not an accurate measure of your effectiveness if you're healing with a disc priest, that fight is totally imbalanced in favor of disc priests because of the damage bonus on Horridon.

Avoid mastery, especially if you're healing with a disc priest. I found a crit build to be optimal two healing with a disc priest, I aimed for a bit above 3764 haste, 11k spirit and the rest crit and it worked great. I've recently switched to 7613 and am indifferent towards it, I think it's a bit overrated for 10 mans, though I haven't reached Ra'den yet. I tried an int heavy build as well and would not recommend it over crit. Two healing helps a lot, you're not gonna break 110k hps on most fights when you're using more healers than necessary. HC Horridon is not an accurate measure of your effectiveness if you're healing with a disc priest, that fight is totally imbalanced in favor of disc priests because of the damage bonus on Horridon.

i would have to say this. aim for ~3900 to compensate for lag and dump the rest into crit. if you have the 4pc you can leave spirit as is since non crit spells aren't as bad. 25 man favors crit mastery and 10 man favors crit.

1st question: Is mastery really the way to go for HC progression?
I've talked to other resto shamans on my server and almost all of them have gone from the 7,6k haste cap to roughly 70~80% mastery through reforging and gemming. With the reasoning that during fights such as Iron Q HC that we will shine when the Raid Group starts to drop under 50~% HP.
I've tried to reforge off my 30% haste cap down to the 25% and reforge the rest into Mastery and personally find no change once-so-ever.

i currently run at the 10513 haste cap for an extra earthliving tick. you're pretty much guaranteed the extra HST tick from the previous breakpoint, and it is a noticeable boost to my earthliving heals.

Just run it on all fights and then do /rss to bring up totals and it will tell you what stats gives you the biggest output gain (Its a addon and not 100% perfect but its still very accurate) The addon also has a tool to look at water shield glyph vs no glyph to give you the best mana gains

- stop gemming spirit use int and int/haste or int/mastery or int/crit or int/spirit gems.
- don’t use Ancestral Swiftness...choose echo of the elements (for more overall healing)
- u can’t use glyph of riptide in 10man.
- try to play with Glyph of Totemic Recall to get your mana for HST back
- Go 20,01% haste (raidbuffed)> about 50% mastery > crit

- stop gemming spirit use int and int/haste or int/mastery or int/crit or int/spirit gems.
- don’t use Ancestral Swiftness...choose echo of the elements (for more overall healing)
- u can’t use glyph of riptide in 10man.
- try to play with Glyph of Totemic Recall to get your mana for HST back
- Go 20,01% haste (raidbuffed)> about 50% mastery > crit

Have a look at some of my logs:
yugø - EU Nozdormu
guild: fidei-amici

Dont go with Echo since its healing is mostly overheal. Ascenstral Swiftness is fine and its controlled instant heal is a lot more reliable then a random proc. Rest of the advice is decent although mostly subjective.

i would have to say this. aim for ~3900 to compensate for lag and dump the rest into crit. if you have the 4pc you can leave spirit as is since non crit spells aren't as bad. 25 man favors crit mastery and 10 man favors crit.

I face the exact same issue with class comp. I've closed the gap considerably with some new gear (I had a lot of bad luck this tier with drops), but still feel as though I never get the power of mastery like I used too. I keep climbing in haste and crit and reforge out of spirit trying to increase through put, but I don't feel the power. Now this is a roller coaster moderating mana, but its only a slight improvement in output.

This being said I am comfortable climbing higher still with haste and crit, but my question is for 10m how much mastery is to little.
Further more I find my self hoarding my cd's because I end up with outrageous over heals.

I haven't raided in about 2 months but most important thing, atleast for me was to try out different setups just to see which one suits your playstyle best. Some prefer more haste, some more mastery others go nuts on crit. I never played haste heavy and was still competitive and were able to get into top 10% of shamans even with 3 healers where other guilds used 2. I never used Ripide or CH glyphs, always played with AS and Totemic recall.

This being said I am comfortable climbing higher still with haste and crit, but my question is for 10m how much mastery is to little.

I'd start worrying if your mastery went below 39%

Seriously, the more you can get rid of, the better. And if you're in doubt and can't test different reforges and gemming because you don't have the gold for it, get that spiffy little addon called restoshamanstats. I only used it last night for the first time, and it just confirmed what I had already suspected. Crit is worth more than twice as much as mastery for me. Sometimes the discrepancy is even higher.

Well I've been reading everyone's posts and taking everything into consideration.
I went back to my 7,6k haste cap, and going rest crit.

I'm still unsure about changing my gemming, seeing as I don't know what more to replace besides the blue +320 spirit gems.

Tho why should I not go for the Riptide glyph in 10man? It's one of my top 3 heals of most fights in ToT and it helps on heavy DMG phases.
Personally, when I used Echo, it was 90% Over-Healing. And lets be honest here, doesn't Healing Rain do enough of that already? haha.

Echo is a terrible choice, go with Swiftness to make haste breakpoints more accessible or EM for the extra burst.

Glyph of Riptide is totally viable on many fights, it's just a matter of using it properly. Blanketing the raid in Riptide is not a good idea, the hot is crap, what makes the glyph great is being able to get Tidal Waves on demand. A large part of your healing on many fights in 10 man comes from single target heals, being able to throw out two quick cast GHW's or high crit chance HS's is a crutch for spread out healing during heavy raid damage, and it's really the only crutch we have. You lose efficiency with the glyph, but it's your best option for throughput when spread out. I use it on fights where I don't want to have Chain Heal glyphed because the cooldown means bad news, Kazra'jin discharge for example, but on a fight like Tortos where you want to get peoples shields up high and single target spells are your only option the Riptide glyph can help a lot. The glyph is also great for baiting meta procs.

Echo is a terrible choice, go with Swiftness to make haste breakpoints more accessible or EM for the extra burst.

Glyph of Riptide is totally viable on many fights, it's just a matter of using it properly. Blanketing the raid in Riptide is not a good idea, the hot is crap, what makes the glyph great is being able to get Tidal Waves on demand. A large part of your healing on many fights in 10 man comes from single target heals, being able to throw out two quick cast GHW's or high crit chance HS's is a crutch for spread out healing during heavy raid damage, and it's really the only crutch we have. You lose efficiency with the glyph, but it's your best option for throughput when spread out. I use it on fights where I don't want to have Chain Heal glyphed because the cooldown means bad news, Kazra'jin discharge for example, but on a fight like Tortos where you want to get peoples shields up high and single target spells are your only option the Riptide glyph can help a lot. The glyph is also great for baiting meta procs.

Actually in 10 man most of my healing comes from HST, healing rain, and HTT. Riptide is up there and is my #1 on H tortos but i never glyph it so with the glyph it wouldn't even be in the running. Furthermore Chain Heal usually beats GHW+HS healing. Single target spells are usually your bottom end spells.

I don't think the cd on ch is that bad, Iron Quon is the only fight where you don't want it in 10 man heroic. Remember that a good chain heal will be more hps than using a GHW or HS. I think it also procs tidal waves as well. I will admit i don't track TW but there is never a time I am spamming single target spells without mixing in something else.

Also for Kaz discharge most of the time you don't even have your raid in 1 spot to CH to. So without the glyph you aren't grabbing everybody and you lose throughput on the the other parts of the fight as well. Furthermore you can use CH on tortos as well to bounce around to everyone and help get thier sheilds up as well since CH now bounces to full health targets as well.

Tho why should I not go for the Riptide glyph in 10man? It's one of my top 3 heals of most fights in ToT and it helps on heavy DMG phases.

when you glyph riptide, its HPM and HPET both go down significantly. even without the glyph, it will still be one of your top heals; you just won't have to use as many GCD on it. by not glyphing it, you can use those GCD on more effective spells.

HST, HTT, and HR are all gonna be big contributors but even if they are your top three your single target heals shouldn't be far behind. Surely it'll change per fight and depending on your healing comp but I rarely have any one spell account for 20% or more of my total healing, meaning my single target spells are in close contention for top three. Chain Heal is great when you can get the full effect out of it, but that happens under few circumstances, and when you can reliably get the full effect out of it you'll likely not want it glyphed. Chain Heal is quite terrible at triage healing because of its slow cast time and mediocre initial heal, two healing on progression you'll most likely find yourself using HS or GHW when it really matters. Variations in strategy will also affect things, our group is stacked for almost every Discharge, and the only other healing intensive part of that fight (Frostbite) Chain Heal is ineffective. Don't forsake Glyph of Riptide, it can be a game changer.

I'm healing with a disc priest (mostly) in 10 man heroics, but we always have a third healer (changes a lot which class it is). Currently in a crit build with very low haste, I find myself using riptide and single target spells a lot my AA heals are quite high, and very little use of chain heal. How low spirit would you consider it would be good to run with? I quite like having a bit more spirit but I understand that maybe stronger heals would be better. Would more haste be better as well? Any opinions welcome.